Water watch​

The Water Justice international blog

The mercury sprints past 30 degrees Celsius most days on Brazil’s world-famous Copacabana Beach. Marcio Silva has walked untold miles here selling bottled water from a cooler to local sun-worshippers and sunburnt tourists alike—half a liter of convenient refreshment and defense against dehydration.“I drink water because water is life, water is health, water is everything,” says Silva, who is 51. “I drink it and sell it to others.”“I don’t want to sell something bad to people.”The water looks clear, clean, unsullied. So does the bottle. For some, it’s a container of convenience. For others, it’s a hedge against dirty or unsafe tap water.Bottled water is marketed as the very essence of purity. It's the fastest-growing beverage market in the world, valued at US$147 billion1 per year.But new research by Orb Media, a nonprofit journalism organization based in Washington, D.C., shows that a single bottle can hold dozens or possibly even thousands of microscopic plastic particles.Tests on more than 250 bottles from 11 brands reveal contamination with plastic including polypropylene, nylon, and polyethylene terephthalate (PET).When contacted by reporters, two leading brands confirmed their products contained microplastic, but they said Orb's study significantly overstates the amount.For plastic particles in the 100 micron, or 0.10 millimetre size range, tests conducted for Orb at the State University of New York revealed a global average of 10.4 plastic particles per liter. These particles were confirmed as plastic using an industry standard infrared microscope.TweetThe tests also showed a much greater number of even smaller particles that researchers said are also likely plastic. The global average for these particles was 314.6 per litre.